Ian Urbina and Jo Craven McGinty - Learning Too Late of the Perils in Gas Well Leases

After Scott Ely and his father talked with salesmen from an energy company about signing the lease allowing gas drilling on their land in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said he felt certain it required the company to leave the property as good as new.

So Mr. Ely said he was surprised several years later when the drilling company, Cabot Oil and Gas, informed them that rather than draining and hauling away the toxic drilling sludge stored in large waste ponds on the property, it would leave the waste, cover it with dirt and seed the area with grass. He knew that waste pond liners can leak, seeping contaminated waste. 

“I guess our terms should have been clearer” about requiring the company to remove the waste pits after drilling, said Mr. Ely, of Dimock, Pa., who sued Cabot after his drinking water from a separate property was contaminated. “We learned that the hard way.”

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/drilling-down-fighting-over-oil-and-gas-well-leases.html

Luke Tonachel - Fact: US Drilling Doesn't Lower Gas Prices

The ‘drill, baby, drill’ approach to energy won’t ease your pain at the pump according to an analysis by the Associated Press. In an article running in papers across the country, AP puts it simply: “…more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.”

The AP’s findings are not surprising. Gasoline prices are subject to the global oil market that U.S. producers cannot control. Changes in the price at the pump do not follow U.S. oil supply trends.

The AP compared inflation-adjusted gas prices to U.S. oil production from 1976 to the present and found no correlation between them. If they were connected one would expect a consistent trend where gas prices eased as production from drilling increased. But AP’s statistical analysis did not bear this out. Multiple statisticians and economists consulted by AP for verification of their analysis also agreed with the findings.

In a recent speech, Senator Jeff Bingamin also pointed out the lack of a relationship between U.S. oil production and gas prices using the chart below.

Read More:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ltonachel/fact_us_drilling_doesnt_lower.html

Greenhouse Gas Will Soar by 50% if Policy Does Not Change Immediately: Report

Global greenhouse gas emissions will rise 50 percent by 2050 unless current energy and climate policies change soon, according to a report released today by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). World energy demand in 2050 will be 80% higher and still 85% reliant on fossil fuel-based energy if current policy does not alter.

OEDC recommends a 'a cocktail of policy solutions' including the use of environmental taxes and emissions trading schemes to make pollution more costly than greener alternatives, among other urgent policy shifts.

Emissions Set to Surge 50 pct by 2050: OECD (Reuters):

Due to such dependence on fossils, carbon dioxide emissions from energy use are expected to grow by 70 percent, the OECD said, which will help drive up the global average temperature by 3 to 6 degrees Celsius by 2100 - exceeding the internationally agreed warming limit of within 2 degrees.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/15-5

The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom

A profile of billionaire natural gas tycoon, Aubrey McClendon, by Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell is out today and it paints a frightening, if not complex, picture of one of the men profiting most from the nation's insatiable appetite for fossil fuels.

Speaking to Goodell over a $100 glass of Bordeaux, McClendon, who is CEO of and co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, challenges the objections to the gas extraction practice known as 'fracking' in which huge amounts of pressurized water and chemicals are pumped down deep into shale formations in the earth to unlock trapped natural gas, forcing it to the surface.  "Where is the mushroom cloud?" McClendon asks. "Where are the dogs with one leg? Where are the people that have been maimed or hurt?"

He is referring to environmentalists and homeowners who claim that fracking is inherently dangerous and underregulated and that is leads to contamination of drinking water supplies and creates enormous amounts of surface waste in and around the communities where drilling operations exist.  If he really wanted to know where the damage was occuring, he might start with Josh Fox's documentary, GasLand, which has served as a rallying cry for anti-fracking activists.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/01-3

Richard Heinberg - $5 Gas = Long, Hot, Crazy Summer

Here in northern California gasoline is now retailing for $4.20 a gallon. Prices haven’t been this high since mid-2008. Forecasts for $5 per gallon gas in the U.S. this summer are now commonplace. What’s driving prices up?

Most analysts focus mostly on two factors: worries about Iran and increased demand from a perceived global economic recovery. However, as we will see, there are also often-overlooked systemic factors in the oil industry that almost guarantee us less-affordable oil.

Iranian Poker

Iran wants nuclear power and (probably) the capacity to build a nuclear weapon; the latter is unacceptable to Israel and the U.S. But there is more to the standoff than this. Iran is a strategic oil and gas exporting country that, for the past 30 years, has escaped integration into the U.S. system of client states; it also occasionally provides assistance to Israel’s enemies. Following the disastrous U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has emerged as the principal power in the region, capable of further destabilizing either of its war-torn neighbors. And Tehran has led a move to ditch the U.S. dollar as the standard currency of exchange in the global oil market.

Read More:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/5-gas-long-hot-crazy-summer/

Renee Parsons - Israel's Nuclear History as US Troops Deploy to Drill

As the Obama Administration coordinates a global PR campaign of scare tactics for the upcoming attack on Iran, eerily reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s lies of WMD’s to justify its invasion of Iraq, it comes as no surprise that the US Congress has added its voice, enfeebled and corrupt as it is, in repayment for the Israel lobby’s $3 M during the 2010 election cycle, to ban any communication between US and Iran government officials. 
   
Intensifying the drums of war with over-the-top statements that Iran, with an inferior set of missiles and a vastly inadequate Navy, represents ‘the greatest threat to world peace” and that ‘the actions and policies of Iran threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States” ignore the inconvenient reality that US intelligence has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons capacity in Iran.Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who needs to cut back on the coffee, recently told 60 Minutes that Iran has “reached a point where they can assemble a nuclear bomb in a year or less’ only to have Pentagon press secretary George Little set the record straight “we have no indication that Iran has made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”   

Read More:

http://trueblueprogressivereport.blogspot.com/2012/01/israels-nuclear-history-as-us-troops.html

Worldwatch Institute - Global Natural Gas Consumption Regains Momentum

Worldwatch Institute http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/12/20-0

Rise in global consumption indicates renewed popularity of natural gas as an energy resource.

WASHINGTON - December 20 - Driven by surging natural gas consumption in Asia and the United States, global use of the form of fossil fuel rebounded 7.4 percent from its 2009 slump to hit a record 111.9 trillion cubic feet ­ in 2010, according to a new Vital Signs Online report from the Worldwatch Institute. This increase puts natural gas's share of total energy consumption at 23.8 percent, a reflection of new pipelines and natural gas terminals in many countries.  

The world's largest incremental increase in natural gas use occurred in the United States, where low prices triggered a 1.3 trillion-cubic-feet increase to 24.1 trillion cubic feet, just over one-fifth of global natural gas consumption. But the Asia Pacific region experienced the strongest growth as a share of 2009 consumption levels, with China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan all experiencing demand growth of over 20 percent. China, which surpassed Japan in 2009 to become Asia's largest natural gas consumer, by and large led the region's growth spurt by consuming 3.9 trillion cubic feet, or 3.4 percent of world usage.

Click to read more ...

Nina Berman - Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Gas Drilling Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands

By Nina Berman, AlterNet

Posted on December 13, 2011, Printed on December 14, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153417/air_too_dangerous_to_breathe%3A_how_gas_drilling_can_turn_rural_communities_into_industrial_wastelands_%5Bwith_photos%5D

The exploding faucet may have launched the movement against fracking, but it's the unsexy compressor station that is pushing it to maturity.

Last week, more than a hundred activists from Pennsylvania and New York, including actor Mark Ruffalo, brought thousands of gallons of drinking water to 11 families in Dimock, Pa., who had been left dry after Cabot Oil and Gas stopped their water deliveries.

The mess Cabot created in 2009 from shale gas drilling had now been cleaned, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which meant no more water for the Dimock 11, the holdout families in a long-running feud over water contamination and cleanup.

At issue was the safety of well water symbolized by a jug filled with brown fluid taken from Dimock resident Scott Ely's well. Held aloft by Ruffalo, who was flanked by families andGasland director Josh Fox, the crowd challenged officials to come and take a swig if the water was so safe. Paul Rubin, a hydrogeologist, painted a grim picture, laying out a future of continued water contamination. The Ely water had arsenic, manganese, aluminum, iron, and lead at several times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for safe drinking water.

Click to read more ...

Rich Bindell - Are Privatized Water Utilities in Cahoots With Shale Gas Companies?

Published on Monday, December 12, 2011 by Food & Water Watch Blog

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/are-privatized-water-utilities-in-cahoots-with-shale-gas-companies/

by Rich Bindell

On one hand, we have shale gas companies who have been rushing into various regions of the country to extract gas using a dangerous extraction process that involves toxic chemicals potentially contaminating our drinking water. On the other hand, we also have investor-owned water utilities (IOU’s) who are taking a public resource out of the hands of the public and profiting greatly from it. What happens when you put them both together? The results are revealed in the latest Food & Water Watch Report, Why the Water Industry is Promoting Shale Gas Development and they could involve the over-generalization of water quality tests, increased water rates and big profits… for the investors.

The report details big concerns about the sketchy relationship between IOU’s and gas companies, including the possibility that IOU’s would protect their investment even if it meant downplaying the risks of contamination caused by their new customers: shale gas companies.

Not only that, but water contamination in a community can lead to new customers for the private water utilities when they need to find a new source of drinking water. Look at what’s happening in Pavillion, Wyoming and Dimock, Pennsylvania, and you can see that this could be a tricky relationship to monitor. If your household relies on its own drinking water well and it suddenly becomes contaminated, you might have to deal with switching to an IOU to provide your water. They can benefit from contamination.

The report also points to IOU’s giving gas-drilling companies discounted rates for water—an average of 45 percent less than residential customers, in the case of one IOU. This sets the tone for water—a public resource —to be sold cheaply to shale gas companies, giving IOU’s a handsome profit. And this water would be used for fracking, which could potentially contaminate water sources.

Do we really want to sell our clean water up the river?

Rich Bindell is a senior writer and outreach specialist at Food & Water Watch.